Unstoppable Momentum

“As soon as I started playing the riff, it put music to a feeling I had in my chest about being so excited to create something. It was a physical sensation in anticipation of moving forward; I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had no doubt that it was going to be incredible.

“The joy and giddiness I felt were impossible to contain; the emotions couldn’t be stopped. It was as if a huge, 200-story ball of something was coming right at me. I could either jump on that thing or let it crush me. My attitude was, ‘I’m jumping on and going for a ride!’

“A lot of times, when people are overwhelmed by something rolling towards them, it tends to be destructive. But I thought, ‘What if this thing sailing at me creates nothing but great stuff? Opportunity, happiness, fun, love – everything you could want.’ I kept that in my mind as I was propelled into writing the rest of the song.

“Recording it in the studio was sheer bliss. The take we used was number six or seven. By the time we played it, I hadn’t really defined the outro yet, so I got on the talkback mic, which I could use as we were playing together, and I said, ‘Why don’t we keep it going? And Vinnie, maybe you can kind of freak out and keep playing the line.’

“What happened was, everybody played the whole song differently, and Vinnie went totally crazy at the end. As the song finished, as the cymbal died down, I screamed, ‘That was fucking awesome!’ That line didn’t make it in – sorry.

“When I planned my guitar solo, I was thinking of something more ethereal sounding. Sitting down to actually record it, I wasn’t moved in quite the same way. I used one of my JS guitars with a Sustainiac, and I went for total guts on it, nothing but teeth and gnarliness. [Laughs]

“I did a thing I call ‘the meat cleaver,’ which is actually something I taught Chad Smith in one of our videos. He wanted to learn something on the guitar, so I showed him just the most ridiculously useless thing ever [laughs]. And there it was – I was in the studio, and I was doing ‘the meat cleaver.’ So I guess it wasn’t so useless after all.”